Thank you for helping us test SU8! The value this community adds is tremendous, and SU8 testing is no exception. Case in point, we released an update to SU8 after getting feedback!
But instead, here is what my experience told me:
Oh, you thought you would be flying tonight? Nope. Go download the entire 100+ GB product.
In all seriousness, you guys nailed it with this beta… almost. Maybe next time provide a better path for insiders to leave the preview without having to download 100GB?
This was mentioned beforehand that this could happen
Also just check if the content is still there but the installer has lost the path. Lot of times pointing back to the ‘official’ folder does the trick preventing the whole sim form downloading
Just FYI for future reference, this was the first beta that pointed back to the default location for me rather than my custom location, and wanted to download the whole thing again. I just clicked in the file location box and it opened a windows box that let me browse and select my custom folder, and was done in a minute. I guess they decided to do away with the “Browse” box, but clicking in the file location box does basically the same thing.
Saved lots of time, but wasn’t inherently obvious. Hope you’ll still test in the future, and take the stated risk of reinstalling, and hope this risk gets minimized even further.
Regards
I think it speaks to the general clumsiness of this game that simply using an update package (Beta or not) can result in having to re-install the whole thing and the developers don’t think that’s a problem. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Clumsy or not … It was clearly noted that there was a very high risk. Users must acknowledge the risk when joining the beta. Does everyone want perfection ? Sure … But when the conditions are presented as they are and you have the option of joining and accepting the inherent risk or not joining and waiting for the normal update procedure i cant see why it is now appropriate to complain.
Also if one did not read the warnings before hand then they probably were not a good candidate to participate in the beta to begin with.
I personally chose not to participate due to the warning and the fact that my install is already complicated (installed on C then moved to D so the files on C are showing links to D).
This is why I didn’t participate on this one. I did on the SU7 and the reason I did was because it was stated that I would run the risk of having to reinstall the whole game if it was installed on the default location. That was the only reason I decided to participate on that one, but in the end, I had the same problem although I stopped it in time. Instead, I cut and pasted the community and official folder to my default location and solved the problem. I only had to change the path when it asked to install the update. I just didn’t want to do that again for this one.
You were warned it might happen for a reason, and folks who have been around these forums for a while are quite familiar with the possiblity of a reinstall after beta.
But every two months, it catches someone by surprise in spite of all the warnings.
I made a backup of my game folder and packages folder with 7-zip before I joined the beta. So it didn’t matter whether the update wanted me to do a full reinstall or not, I wouldn’t need to download or reinstall the full sim. But as it turned out everything worked fine so I deleted my backup yesterday.
Yup, downloading whole sim now… I knew that this could probably happen but I thought I had time untill 7 march to leave the Beta. Yesterday I could run the beta but today I was forced into the update…
This is the case with every beta and the way to avoid it is having your sim installed on a custom path. I did not have any re-install after leaving the flight and updating to release SU8 as I directed the update to my custom path which recognized it was installed. This is not new and is always a disclaimer for every beta. Cheers